Information implosion

Haboob - Haboob (1971)

Jimmy Jackson can be heard on albums by Amon Düül II , Embryo, Utopia, Doldinger’s Passport and Eberhard Weber, but this was a stab at his own band.

Very unusual mix of blues, funky-jazz with acid rock, avant-garde, and space rock. Jackson’s choir-organ is prominent in the mix of  Powell’s acid guitar and Green’s adventurous drum arrangements. Tracks like “Sooloo” are very strange with intense interplay as musicians feed of each other and create disturbing and spacey atmosphere.

Very cool and unique album, too bad it was the only one from Haboob.

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Erlkoenig - Erlkoenig 1973

Interesting krautrock album with organ and keyboards dominating most compositions. All these organs and keyboards coupled with melodramatic vocals give this album somewhat disturbing and dark melancholy feel.

Entire album has has very underground and low key feel to it. There is a lot of reverb on vocals, but there is not a lot of these here as it’s mostly an instrument album. Entire recoding gives a sense of an organic, almost live in studio, performance with very spacious sound with fairly good stereo image. Guitars play off the keyboards and organ very nicely especially on longer tracks like Thoughts. Although very well played overall, special mention must be made of superb and varied keyboard work by Eckhardt Freynik. Bonus tracks on GoD CD are OK but not as good as the album.

If you like your prog raw sounding with a LOT of dynamic keyboard/organ work get this one.

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Island - Pictures 1977

After neglecting my pet project here I figure I start again by adding a little blurb from “Crack In the Cosmic Egg” about dark and adventurous Swiss krautrock influenced band Island.

In essence, Island could be seen as some sort of Swiss supergroup, though really they were the evolution from a number of bands, originating from Deaf, whilst also interconnected with Toad (but not ex-Brainticket as often reputed) and Circus, as well as other lesser-knowns. So many origins and influences resulted in Island creating a refined and complex style. Apparently sessions exist with various line-ups circa 1974-1977, of which one such work is included on the recent CD reissue of their LP.

On their sole album PICTURES, which was aptly as gloomy and as strange as H.R. Giger’s visionary cover art, Island’s music oozed invention. Often quoted as the Swiss Van der Graaf Generator, Island had a similar feel, with a very odd instrumentation for a rock band and a vocalist who sounds like a hybrid of Peter Hammill (with a German accent) with a few Peter Gabriel touches. They were by no means copyists however, like Berlin’s acclaimed Van der Graaf Generator: Metropolis, Island had all sorts of unique elements at play, full of gloom and sinister lyrics. PICTURES has justly been acclaimed as one of the masterpieces of Swiss rock.

Since Island’s demise Peter Scherer moved into the fusion field, and later recorded an album together with American jazz experimentalist Arto Lindsay. Actually PRETTY UGLY (LP/CD Made To Measure MTM 23) from 1990 turned out to be a surprising blend of high-tech electro styles, and not all what one would expect!

This very interesting and very complex album was re-released by Laser’s Edge on CD in 1996. This CD is sadly OOP now.

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